Life is beautiful and brutal, tender and terrible — keep your heart open.

Something Good

Picture from our walk yesterday morning, and quote from a fortune cookie from our lunch the same day — which it turns out is actually wisdom from Guillaume Apollinaire, a French novelist who died in November of 1918

7. Teachers Learn About Their Bias Towards Students. (video) “The ratio of white teachers to students of color is a national problem. This New York school district is training educators on how to talk about race, and address their own biases.”

19. Lemonade for Love. (video) “This little girls kindness and generosity is so well needed in this world.”

20. This kid is so awesome. (video) “When Hurricane Harvey slammed into Dickinson, TX, 13-year-old Virgil Smith trudged into the water with an air mattress to transport his stranded neighbors to safety.”

23. Who knows who you’ll help? Susan Hyatt makes a really good point about the importance of doing what you do. “We’re all here to serve one another. Whether it’s through a blog post, an article, a business, a fundraiser, or some other project, we’re all here to serve humanity. So, go create and share. Please don’t hold yourself back. Because who knows who you’ll help?”

This holiday, before you comment on how much you’ve eaten, the weight of your regret, your fears for the body you might grow into, your fears for the bodies around you, your anxiety about anyone eating too much, stay silent for a moment. Sit with how it feels not to say it. Sit with what you wanted to say. Ask why you wanted to say it. Ask who it would benefit.

Giving Tuesday is a national movement fundraising day that happens on Nov. 28th which focuses on altruistic giving, particularly in the online space. Like most structures impacted by systems of violence, Giving Tuesday has become monopolized by the Non-profit Industrial Complex. To make it plain: huge heirarchal non-profit organizations take up space and collect money that the very communities they proport to organize for never see. We are disrupting that model and centering Black Women and femmes. Join us in the work!